Failing to Appear

Posted By Bigger & Harman || 22-Jan-2014

If you fail to take care of a traffic ticket before the deadline, the state
may suspend your license without even notifying you directly.

You are also in violation of
Vehicle Code Section 40508 if you make a payment arrangement and do not keep it, or make arrangements
to take a driving safety class and do not timely present proof of completion.

When an officer gives you a citation for an infraction, your signature
on the ticket is your legal promise to appear in court on or before a
certain date pay the fine, plead not guilty and set a trial date, make
arrangements to take a driving safety course, or otherwise take care of
your ticket.

Many times the drivers may mistakenly rely on a "courtesy notice"
to tell them when to appear in court, and the notice never comes. But
a Lamont or Mojave judge will not accept such an excuse, because the ticket
itself has the court information and appearance date in the fine print.

An FTA is always a misdemeanor, meaning that you can be arrested for an
FTA violation. There are three absolute defenses to an FTA charge:

A judge may consider other defenses as well; for example, a loved one may
have been ill and you were distracted by that illness. As stated above,
however, a judge generally does not accept excuses or attempts to blame
someone else for your failure to appear. A failure to appear normally
requires an in person appearance or a lawyer to appear for you. Oftentimes
the fines and assessments in combination with your ticket can be in the
thousands of dollars.

The information on this website is for general information purposes only.
Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual
case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt
or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship.